Tuesday, March 31, 2009

[Apologies to regular readers/commenters for the gratuitous profanity, but sometimes you gotta talk to the trolls in troll-speak, and this is all they apparently understand.]Hey, fuckface! Yeah, you over there using your thumb and index finger to feverishly stroke your nipple-sized dick while typing number-filled rape jokes one-handed! Yeah, I see you, cocksucker, desperately trying to get your head low enough to lap the viscous, foul-tasting jizz off the underside of your desk while refreshing the comment threads in order to get your third nipple erect again.

I know you think you're sooooo smart, that the deity of your small brain's choosing gifted you with some enormous intellect to make up for the joke between your legs that science calls a penis and women call "Wow, is that really it?" while reaching for their clothes, but the sad truth, motherfucker, is that there is no God, life is a joke crueler than even your Ken doll wang is to a woman drunk enough to go home with you and, in all truth, you got neither the intellect you think you have nor the capacity to please either a woman or a man sexually. Anonymous rape jokes in comment threads on my site are actually a sign that you can't play big boy snark games with the grown-ups at your favorite alternative blog, and sticking numbers in words like you wish you could stick your nubbin in a real lady's vagina instead of that plastic one your mom got you after she caught you diddling the cat doesn't mean you outsmarted anything but a computer program and the man that founded your favorite blog (who designed the program in the first place).

Oh, and just because you have a really large clitoris that your family doctor deigned to call a penis lo those many years ago doesn't mean that I can't be grosser, crueler and actually funny all at the same time. And I have the balls to put it under my own name, unlike you. You don't even have the testicular fortitude to say that shit under your "real" fake name, you gotta make up a sock puppet so that your own blog's overlords won't know that you're really spectacularly unfunny and a gross human being and keep you from your little Internet friends. I mean, I guess it's no wonder, what with you getting the majority of your body's sustenance from your own nasty jizz, Budweiser, Smart Food and your mom's yeast-infected pussy, that you don't have the guts to put it out there under your own name -- yours obviously rotted away years ago, like your supposed sense of humor.

For the first time in the life of my car (a 2001 Toyota Corolla, manual transmission), I logged 40.5 mpg driving on the highway this past weekend. I am inordinately proud of this, though I had relatively little to do with it. It does, however, make my car ineligible for Obama's voucher program, not that I have to money to buy a different car, or any car, or even the particular desire to hold on to mine that much longer.

Related to that, New Jersey Turnpike gas prices are better than Arlington, D.C., Maryland rest stops, Delaware or New York by 20 cents or more at the moment.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Lots of people are saying lots of smart things, but this is my minor quibble. Having worked on dealer issues at the state level (auto industry and heavy equipment), I have to say that state-level dealer laws (often pushed by Republicans!) are some of the most heavy-handed, over-regulatory laws I've ever seen that, to me, seem to run counter to the entire idea of a free market. Most dealers can turn over their dealerships to their kids to run into the ground without regards to the kids' qualifications or education; they have laws protecting them from the car companies authorizing new dealerships too close even if their own dealerships are failing; manufacturers have to go through years-long processes to de-authorize a dealer (if they can at all ever) even if the dealer is breaking his/her contract with the manufacturers, fucking up customer service, not paying for the cars, or spending time in jail for embezzlement. Look into it, it's crazy.

Also, when GM tried to stop manufacturing Oldsmobiles because no one wanted to buy them, Arizona Senator Jeff Bingaman did everything in his power (on behalf of Olds dealers, natch) to keep GM from stopping production on a wildly unpopular brand that they couldn't pay people to drive. That, too, was kind of crazy.

Anyways, so I'm wondering whether bankruptcy will allow GM to renegotiate those contracts, too, or just the ones where retirees continue to get health insurance? I'm guessing the old guys are just going to get fucked and the dealers will be totes fine.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Apathy is such a strange thing for me to feel. It's so unlike me not to care if what I say hurts someone, or bothers someone, or ends a particular friendship. I hate it, actually, this unprovoked emotional minimalism, the way it doesn't correspond with how I normally relate to the world or the people in mine. I can conjure up annoyance, I'm good at annoyance, but annoyance is an emotional expression of personal inconvenience, not of caring one way or the other. I find apathy isolating, as though everyone around me is switched on and my wiring is fried.

The feeling of drunken isolation in a loud place, though, coupled with the urgency that is a blank page and a black pen, I sort of love because at least with the pen and the pad I am doing something other than watching people and feeling myself so separate. I feel like the people I'm watching aren't wondering why I'm silent, aren't trying to interpret my facial expressions. I stop wondering how to snap myself back into place, how to fit in, how to make myself heard or even understood and just let go of the desire to not feel weird inside and try instead to write the weirdness away.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

What I like about this guy is that in the midst of my rage, he looks at me and says, "it must be hard always being the smartest person in the room." And I have to laugh. And then he hugs me and I don't want to rage anymore.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Friday, March 20, 2009

me: should i do northern ireland, the congo or solitude?unidentified co-worker: hmm. i think solitudeme: ok, i love that the list is: abortion, rape and a lifetime aloneunidentified co-worker: really, a typical day for you, blogging-wise

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

We learn to reel it in because when you're on display like she was, you're spending it all for nothing. You're performing for free for a tiny audience. ... I crave your attention but I can't do the old strip-tease for free. A body's got to get paid. Truth be told I still want your whispered admiration and your secret envy of my coolness but not enough to wreck my car and go to jail for it. I have to be the boring one in the crowd of loud laughter or go down screaming to an early grave.

It's a weird thing to say, but the streets of the boroughs were abandoned when I drove home late last night. It couldn't have even been that late, since my phone indicates I drunk dialed a friend at 12:30 just to talk and not say anything of import -- maybe everyone was just holed up in bars still.

As I was pulling into my neighborhood and searching for parking that I'm hoping didn't get me ticketed or towed today (must check!), this came on my iPod (set to Shuffle) for the first time in ages. I probably sang along to this a bunch in the summer of 2003, but haven't really listened to it a ton since then. It's funny to think of the way I was that summer, sloughing off the end of an unhappy relationship, getting involved in a time-wasting and inappropriate rebound, making all these plans for how my life would go. It's strange to be living with a roommate again for the first time since then, negotiating space, waking up to sunlight coming from that direction again, viewing my life like some new adventure yet with way more emotional detachment than I feel like I ever mustered up when ironic detachment was cool instead of a state I don't really remember how to get out of anymore.

Before I left my friend in good hands last night and drove home, I got a text from someone that I really care about who still doesn't think I should have moved away. So this lyric caught me more than normal, I guess. I don't really leave that often.

Lay your head down on my bed, please don't ask me why.Why am I leaving? Why don't I know?Something deep inside me is forcing me to goYou say you need me, but you can't tell me no.And when I ask you to stop me, baby, you just let me go.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Apparently, for nightmares, nothing beats the German film Mostly Martha which I watched before bed. Given the scene in which Martha gets the call that her sister has died was a little too reminiscent of the night my grandmother died, I would have expected sad dreams but zombie mosquito alien nightmares? What the hell?

On the other hand, it was a more optimistic zombie dream than average because it wasn't totally 100% that you'd become a zombie if you got bitten by an alien mosquito. And, in the dream, I could totally climb fences, but that's definitely the fault of the conversation with the RCN guy.

I’m gonna say it right now, I was raped and I’m a feminist and I have no fucking problem with rape scenes in a movie. Are we supposed to pretend that rape doesn’t happen? Will that make it go away? No it won’t. Fuck, I enjoy seeing rapists brutally murdered, don’t you? And also why should rape, be NC17? Unless it’s insanely graphic it’s no different from any other violent act in a film.

I mean, first off, some basic knowledge of whether the rape scene was as graphic as every single reviewer agreed that it was -- more so than the other violent acts in the film -- would have been helpful. Second off, the difference between an R rating and an NC-17 rating is that parents are not allowed to bring children to the latter. Anyone who hasn't seen too-young children in a violent, R-rated movie (Mel Gibson's crucifixion movie anyone?) obviously doesn't go to movies that much.

The other thing comes from me being old. The NC-17 rating was developed in response to the movie Henry and June, for its "graphic" portrayals of consensual lesbian sex. By "graphic," it was meant that the movie portrayed 2 women kissing, one of whom was bare-breasted. It also portrayed one of those women sleeping with multiple partners, none of which was particularly graphic. If one peruses the list of movies given NC-17 ratings, one notices rather a theme, which is that movies that garner the rating for "explicit" sexuality -- usually consensual, usually, frankly, involving portrayals of women engaging in sexual behavior defined as "promiscuous" -- can rarely re-edit and get an R rating, whereas the vast majority of violent movies can and are re-edited to get an R-rating and lose little violence as a result of that editing, which is widely viewed in Hollywood as both a wrist-slapping and a way to generate more publicity for the teen boys which are widely considered to be the audience for ultra-violent movies.

There are plenty of movies out there with graphic and repulsive rape scenes -- The General's Daughter, if one likes exploitative, and Heaven & Earth, if one prefers thoughtfulness in the depiction, and, in fact, a not-particularly-graphic quasi-rape scene in Henry & June -- and very few movies that have them garner NC-17 ratings. However, when a movie portrays a woman having sex in a consensual fashion without heed to the restrictions of society (or the MPAA Ratings Board), or portrays homosexual acts in a graphic fashion (other than in Bound, where both actresses were known heterosexuals), or any consensual act outside of a very limited range of heteronormative masculine sexuality, those movies often garner NC-17 ratings.

For a more mainstream comparison, please compare Pulp Fiction's non-graphic love scene of a woman asking for and receiving oral sex (notably, the same actress from Henry & June) instead of penetrative vaginal intercourse and the graphic depiction of rape. One they cut away from, and one they show in all its horror (in addition to the violence), which sends the message that one is taboo and the other acceptable. That's the problem, regardless of whether it's in the exploitation genre or features an equally graphic portrayal of the Biblical "eye for an eye" after the rape.

Being raped doesn't make one a feminist, and watching movies with rape scenes in them doesn't make a person not a feminist. But neither does a knee-jerk defense of America's movie-industrial complex's right to decide that violent rape scenes are appropriate for children if their parents agree, and to decide that consensual sexuality is not if it doesn't portray sex in a certain light.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

From Erica, who knows I can never resist a good someecard. I have to admit, though, you don't want me on your side in a softball game unless you want someone who knows all the rules and can keep score or coach, because I have shitty hand-eye coordination.I'm sending you my testimonial via ecard, because I thought this card was appropriate.

REASONS WHY MEGAN CARPENTIER IS AWESOME TO DATE

1) She's awesome. No really, she has a ton of fun, a great laugh, and is really into having a good time. Which is like, you know, important if you're into having a good time as well.2) She is smart. Who else can have conversations about international politics, feminist theory, and celebrities' sex lives with an equal amount of insight on all of them?3) She will tell you how she feels. Who the hell wants to deal with someone who putzes around, hinting at a reason why they might be mad but never just coming out with it. Not you right? Good, because Megan won't do that. If she is upset or disagrees with you, she'll just tell you. Revolutionary, right?4) She has great boobs, and knows how to use them.5) She is funny, and will make you laugh so hard you'll snort beer out your nose6) And above all, she is one of the most loyal, caring and dedicated friends I have ever met. She will be there through thick and thin, irregardless, and will do whatever it takes to make sure you're ok. If that means driving through snow for eight hours, ok! Phone calls in the middle of the night? Sure! She is the person you want to have your back in a bar fight, on your side in the softball game, and there for you when something bad happens. You can count on her without question. Because when she cares about someone she does it 100%, with all her heart.*

*disclaimer: this last point especially makes her friends care very much about her, which can make it very dangerous if you do something wrong or that hurts Megan. Short of it is, you better treat her well or there WILL be consequences.

Reblogged from "Hooplehead" and untrue insofar as I am utterly uncool. I did CEFAD a dude once, but he totally deserved it and I probably wouldn't do it again.

Megan is one of the most clever and funny people I know. Most people who are killing themselves trying are not half as cool as she is. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of politics and filthy sexual references, which she likes to talk about simultaneously. Unlike most ladies, Megan will encourage you to look at her boobs. She's a writer, so you may get to see your name/description in print (hopefully not in Crap Email from a Dude!) She's one of my favorite drinking buddies, and you are damn lucky to have her up there.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

One of the things I love about the bars here is that they never seem to just have standard shit playing. One of the things that sucks about auto-memorizing the lyrics to songs is that sometimes they totally get stuck in your head. Edie's been singing in my head much of the morning, over and over, "Everything is temporary anyway. When the streets are wet, the colors slip into the sky. But I don't know why that means you and I are, that means you and I... quit. I give up. Nothing's good enough for anybody else it seems."

She is not pretending to be someone she is not. She is not out to impress you. She is not seeking your approval. She is raw energy given female form. She will talk fashion one minute, politics the next, share intimate and sometimes painful details of her life, and do it while drinking and dancing and carousing with the best of them.

I agree! I remember, just before meeting you for the first time in Denver, thinking, "I hope Megan Carpentier turns out to be all of those things!" And, lo, Megan Carpentier turned out to be much better.

Monday, March 9, 2009

From Nefarious Newt (reblogged from the comments). I do tend to send him wacky Flair.

I only know Megan through her work and what little correspondence we've shared... well, that and the flair she has sent me on Facebook. I could sit here and wax poetic about her beauty, rhapsodic about her intellect, or philosophic about her view of the universe. In any age, she would be the kind of woman that odes, sonnets, and testaments would be written about, the kinds that would resonate throughout the ages.

Instead of providing lists of her virtues and attributes, instead of trying to justify why becoming involved with her would be the zenith of rapture, let me put it as plainly as I can: Megan is worth dating because she is a real woman. She is not pretending to be someone she is not. She is not out to impress you. She is not seeking your approval. She is raw energy given female form. She will talk fashion one minute, politics the next, share intimate and sometimes painful details of her life, and do it while drinking and dancing and carousing with the best of them.

Megan is there, open to you, and if you accept the gifts she has to give you without precondition, you will not regret it. If you choose not to, it most assuredly marks you as a fool.

This comes from my friend Wobblie who I would never, ever call "second-rate." I'd call him awesome, actually. And I'd drive to Connecticut and even New Jersey to hang out with him.

I've never dated Megan. In fact, I'm quite happily married, and as such, I think I maintain a certain amount of credibility as an "objective observer." And this objective observer would totally hook Megan up with a friend. Allow me then, dear reader, to humbly suggest why you should date Megan Carpentier.

1. She's hot: Let's face it, anyone can look good. But Megan's not only got the good looks, she's also got the smarts and confidence to back up the looks. She's what the kids are calling the "total package," if, in fact, that's what the kids are calling things these days. Which I wouldn't know, because the kids don't particularly let me in on their hip lingo. But total package will work.

Oh - and the tits. When Megan brags about her tits, she's not lying.

2. She has a dirty mouth: And dirty mouths are evidence of dirty minds. Megan talks dirty about the appropriations process. Just imagine how she talks about things that get guys going. I think you know what I'm saying here.

3. She's cool: So you've been invited for a night out at the bars with your friends, and your girlfriend wants to tag along. You're naturally horrified because this means either a) she'll make you leave before things start to get real fun or b) she'll yell at you in the morning for getting completely shitfaced. Let's be clear: Megan is not that chick. In fact, I'm pretty sure Megan can drink you under the table.

4. She's genuine: If you're not totally sold by now, here's the clincher. Megan had no reason to randomly meet up for drinks with me, a second-rate commenter/blogger a year-and-a-half ago, but she did, and we struck up a friendship. Despite being incredibly busy and something of a rising star in her field, she's taken the time to cultivate that friendship. I have no doubt that if I were in her neck of the woods and needed to hang out with someone, she would totally find the time to make sure we could get together for a few hours. And I'm just a casual friend. Imagine the devotion if she were to fall in love with you.

So there's the quick and dirty list about why you should date Megan. One caveat, however - if you do her wrong, we will find you, and we'll be sorely tempted to beat your ass. We probably won't, because we're generally nice people (you should ask Megan about us!), but we will mock you mercilessly. Because Megan inspires that kind of devotion in us. Okay, so go on and ask her out already!

I don't remember exactly why I thought this was a good idea (though I think it had to do with a Barbera and a Cabernet Sauvignon), but I decided last night on a bloggy project. That project is for people to explain why dudes should date me. I probably shouldn't talk to my mom when I'm drinking.

See, the thing is that back in the day, when you made it to your mid-twenties still uncoupled -- the little voice in my head snorted when I typed that -- you met potentials not on the internet or at a bar, but through your friends. It was sort of like job interviews -- everyone came with recommendations. Anyway, for some reason, my friends and I thought it would be funny to write me recommendations. Leave your own in the comments, if you like, or email me and I'll post them.

Why, yes, I am having kind of a low self-esteem moment. Why do you ask?

But to admit that I was dizzy and inappropriate after a few drinks would belie my German/Irish/English heritage, my Guy’s Girl persona, and my profession as a writer. Despite a few debacles (a sullied car or two, the suggestion that we have sex when, in fact, we already had) I persisted in behavior like downing shots with the 23-year-old at work, or worse, drinking with actors. Such hardy drinking resulted in my husband wisely escorting me out the side exit of many establishments, but I refused to be ashamed.

For one, I don't have a husband. Also, I have no German heritage. And, um, I haven't puked in a car since college, and I haven't puked out of a car since grad school, though I was close last March.

Because in the good old days, I would have had at least half a bottle [of wine] by myself and would have started slurring non-sequiturs to my husband in the middle of “Damages.”

Once again, no husband. Also, I don't really watch TV (certainly not at the moment, as I have neither a television nor a cable hook up). Also, I usually drink an entire bottle of wine before I start slurring, and non-sequiturs are basically the basis of most conversations with me. Well, and the whole piece is about drinking and having a kid which I definitely (thankfully) don't have.

Anyway, all of this is to say that somehow, I need to figure out how to get hired to blog for Proof. I'll even drink this Unicum shit if it helps.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Shortly after my 30th birthday, my friend Josh took me down to Ikea and bought me a new beaver. This is the first time I got my beaver drunk, later that afternoon.

Many people know I have a tendency to bring my beaver places, get it drunk, talk about it in the 3rd person and generally behave in a way that people I don't know might find embarrassing if they knew me. Apparently, I should live in Australia, where a woman's beaver is part of no less than two Kotex commercials (made after I started hanging out and posing with my beaver, lest you think me uncreative). They are pretty hilarious.